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unitymitford:

• The Muslims were the instigators. The Christians that lived in the Middle East peacefully were told to convert or die. The Church sent soldiers to DEFEND their people.
• It was not about proselytizing and forcing others to convert to Christianity. Forced conversions are EXPLICITLY FORBIDDEN in Catholicism. The point was to protect the Christians, make sure the holy places were run by Christians, and ensure that the roads were safe to travel on
• The Catholic church allowed the Muslims to expand and be violent for 400 years before acting.
• The false version of the crusades came from books like The DaVinci Code and  (before that) Talisman by Sir Walter Scott (the latter was taken as serious history and not a novel by Kaiser Wilhelm II, as his mother raised him on Scott’s works. He even visited the tomb of Saladin to pay homage to him. Remember that Saladin had all the Shia Muslims slaughtered!).
• Michaud’s history also horribly misinterprets the intent of the crusades, because he was a French nationalist. He was simply fantasizing about French imperialism. Nationalists from other countries, when they read it, developed similar notions of their history, and now we have the current misunderstanding of the crusades.
• Let me be clear about this: THE VERY PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT NATIONALISTS BELIEVE THE CRUSADES ARE EVIL BECAUSE OF NATIONALIST AND IMPERIALIST SYMPATHIES.
• Pope John Paul II’s apology for the Crusades was not an apology or admission of wrongdoing towards Muslims. No, it was an apology to the Orthodox Christians for sacking Constantinople (which was not by the order of the Pope and was the decision of a single army seeking personal gain).
• Does it really make sense to punish Europeans and Americans for something that happened a thousand years ago? 
• All people are trying to do is blunt the impact of the violence being done in the name of Islam, and to stop resistance against the Islamization of Europe. 
• The same people holding white Christians accountable for the Crusades refuse to even acknowledge that the Islamic world was the last to outlaw slavery and, in fact, slavery is still an epidemic in multiple Islamic countries.
• You cannot reduce 200 years of war to a quick soundbite of “Christians are evil, Muslims are good”.
• If there is any connection between the Crusades and modern terrorism, it is only in the everlasting savagery of Islam

Every single time people misinterpret the Crusades I feel an immense swell of frustration. This is multiplied by infinity when they try to pair it up with “HuRr HuRr, ThE oTtOmAnS wErE tHe GoOd GuYs AlL aLoNg!!!11!” May time travel be invented so their past victims come and smack you in the face.